Better Son
by Lithium Junkie
Summary: The mantle of team leader is a heavy one to bear. Let's take a look through ruby quartz glasses. [A series of Scottcentric ficlets.]
1. Feeling Older

**Any time is a good time for Scott Summers. Therefore, as a side-project that's more for my own personal amusement than anything else, I will be playing with Scott. **

**Each piece will be lyrically inspired. This is the result of my having discovered the set2music community, and thinking it a damn good idea. That, and a drabble exchange between the Countess and myself that grew to epic proportions, and sealed our Scott love forever. **

**A few warnings, notes, and the like for the curious or otherwise morbidly inclined. **

**This whole collection is both Jott and Scogue friendly. I hate to be crass, but seriously – don't like, don't read. Expect to see both ships as well as good ole' genfic putting in appearances over the course of this mess. **

**There is no timeline, no specific genre, just a collection of bits and pieces from various places in the life of the X-Men Evolution incarnation of Scott Summers. Get set for laughter, tears, and the whole damn thing. **

**(Translation? Welcome to a dumping ground for everything and anything Scott-related. Enjoy your stay)**

**Submitted for your approval, ladies and gentlemen: "A Better Son".**

------

_**A man grows older, but his soul remains alive.**_

Time is a funny thing. You can't grasp it, see it, or change it, but you can feel it like none other sometimes.

Scott Summers is feeling time today.

He supposes it's showing too – he's thirty years old now, a veritable lifetime away from the kid who showed up on Xavier's doorstep with his eyes closed and crying. There are lines on his forehead that he doesn't recognize, and a shadow cast over his face that he can only attribute to the chip on his shoulder that never really went away.

Fifteen straight years of world-saving heroics have taken their toll on him.

He feels tired. He feels sore. He feels _old._

There's a knock at the door, and he turns only to see a suited-up Jean.

"Ready to go?" She asks, and he answers her with a nod and a grin that on anyone else might be thought of as feral. It's the smile of a hardened warrior. It seems to suit him.

"Always."

It's not a weary and aching thirty year old that walks out the door. It's an eighteen year old hero ready to take on the world.


	2. Dead Man Walking

_**Where's the girl with the blaze in her eyes? Where's the girl who could turn on the edge of a knife? Where's the girl who was breathing for life?**_

He knew from the beginning that this would happen. He _knew._ And yet he stood by and did nothing as he watched it happen.It was almost poetic justice then that he was the one dealing with the fallout.

"Rogue?" He tried, placing a gentle hand on her trembling shoulder. She gave no reply except for a sob disguised as a hiccup. He took a seat next to her, not really knowing what else to do.

"You wanna talk about it?"

She looked towards him at this, wiping her eyes and throwing him a scowl that would have done Wolverine proud.

"What's to talk about? He left me."

His hands balled in to fists. Scott was thankful they were hidden beneath the table and that Rogue couldn't see it.

_Bastard, _he growled to himself. _Ungrateful, undeserving, asshole._

Rogue's lip quivered for a moment as she teetered between regaining her composure and falling back in to body-wracking sobs. The later won out, and Scott soon had a hysterical Rogue literally crying on his shoulder.

"Why did he do it Scott? Why am I not good enough?"

Oh, God, he was going to kill him. Kill him dead. So dead. He'd done this to Rogue, he'd reduced her to this sobbing mess, and Scott was going to kill him.

He wrapped an arm around her, and had the feeling that he ought to be telling her that she was plenty good enough, that she was amazing and wonderful and that the jerk hadn't deserved her in the first place.

It would all be true. Every word.

For some reason though, he couldn't seem to find his tongue.

So Scott just sat there and rocked Rogue as gently as he knew how while she cried it all out. Remy LeBeau, wherever he was, was a dead man walking.


	3. Fly Away

_**Don't look down, you'll become the sacrifice.**_

There's fire in the air, and the smell of smoke is choking him. Explosions deafen him temporarily, and one is almost too close. He manages to dive away in time though, finding shelter behind what might have once been a car.

In other words, just another day at the office.

He scrambles to his feet and is barking orders within seconds. It's while he's tearing across the battlefield that he realizes he really can't see much at all. There's too much debris, too much movement, too much of everything. He needs a clearer view, and he needs it now.

The answer presents itself in the black-clad form of Rogue.

"Rogue! I need a bird's eye view!"

This stops her in her tracks, an uncharacteristic reaction from the take-no-prisoners girl that he knows so well. There's fear in her eyes as she replies.

"I…I'm not that good at it. I haven't flown outside of the Danger Room yet, and I can't really--"

He seizes her shoulders, looking right at her as he speaks.

"I trust you."

This silences her babbling.

She bites her lip, hesitant, but nods anyways before gripping his shoulders and taking off in to the sky.


	4. Hardass

_**I don't own emotion, I rent.**_

Scott gets so tired of hearing the jokes about sticks and his ass. He's sick of hearing it hurled as an insult too, especially when the hurlers think that he can't hear them.

Everyone thinks they're being so creative and clever whenever they mutter something about him needing to pull that stick out, or that someone must have jammed it in a little further today.

It makes him ill.

The fact that they keep making these jokes, the fact that they _believe _them, tells Scott that they don't get him. That they don't know him.

Scott says nothing though. He remains cool and in control in the face of the bad jokes that they think he doesn't hear, and the grumbled complaints about him being an uptight jerk, a hardass, a kill-joy.

In the end though, they're on to something.

There's a line between Scott Summers and Cyclops that a lot of people just don't seem to see, a line that's drawn very clearly whenever the leathers go on. Once he's in uniform, he's not Scott anymore. He's Cyclops.

Scott is a classmate, a boyfriend, a guy with a penchant for cars and dry sarcasm.

Cyclops is not their friend. Cyclops is their field leader, their commander. Cyclops is a hardass. When the world's at stake though, should a leader be anything but?

Jean and Rogue see it. They get that line, they respect it. Remy's figured it out too. The way he almost viciously demarcates between Gambit and Remy is almost identical to the line Scott has drawn between himself and Cyclops.

Scott takes solace in the fact that at least those three understand – while Cyclops may be the head of a paramilitary team bent on stopping international (and sometimes even intergalactic) threats, Scott Summers is just a teenage boy who could use a friend once in a while.


	5. Flight and Fall

_**Son of man, turn to the skies.**_

It strikes Scott as being slightly ironic that despite the circumstances surrounding his parents death and the catalyzing of his powers, he's somehow gotten involved in a love affair with the Blackbird. There's something about being behind the controls of roughly one ton of sleek, black metal moving at speeds of roughly mach 2 that stirs something in him to the point where Jean's suggested (however jokingly) that he just might leave her for the Bird.

It defies all logic, but Scott's not afraid of flying. He loves it.

It's falling that scares the living shit out of him.


	6. Everything Burns

_**I'm in love with my lust, burning angel wings to dust, I wish I had your angel tonight**___

"Jean."

It's not a question. The creature cocks her head in curiosity. What could this stranger in glasses want? She's not Jean. She's light, she's life, she burningpassionfirelifedeathburnburnburn…

Who is Jean?

"Jean, I know you hear me."

Something screams at the back of the creature's awareness. Female. Red hair. Green eyes. Pain and posession.

It's Jean.

The creature remembers now. She wears this Jean's skin. She recalls now. She is Jean, Jean is her, she is Jean, Jean is her, she isbrilliance, radiance, eternityforeverlifedeathburnburnburn…

There's a girl behind the man in glasses. A tiny thing with her hand on his shoulder and stripes in her hair.

Curious.

"Jean!" The man tries again and his desperation tastes like life and death at the same time.

Delicious.

Jean screams once more, a name – Scott. She screams for him, screams that she is alive and that she loves him and that --

The creature grows irritated.

_I will burn her, _the creature says, and it's as much to Jean as to Scott._ I will burn her and she will die and there will be only me. There will be only joy, ecstasy, immortality pleasurepainpuritylifedeathburnburnburn…_

There is shocked silence. Good.

It is the girl with the stripes in her hair who recovers first. She pushes this Scott to the side and takes to the sky with intention on her face.

_Silly girl,_ the creature laughs. _Do you think you stand a chance? I am life. I am death. I am ETERNITY. _

Jean screams again, she screams that it's too dangerous and that Rogue shouldn't be stupid and she should look after Scott for her and –

But it is too late. The Rogue has her hands upon the creature.

And then there is nothing.


End file.
